Conservative leadership

Express
LIZ Truss insisted “enough is enough” as she promised new laws to prevent rail strikes bringing the nation to a standstill.
The frontrunner in the battle to become Conservative leader vowed to introduce legislation within 30 days of entering Number 10. She said: “No longer will the unions be able to dictate who can get to work.”
Rival candidate Rishi Sunak is also planning action to end the strikes if he wins the contest. A spokeswoman said: “As Prime Minister, Rishi would put a stop to militant unions holding hardworking people to ransom.”
Rail passengers suffered another day of misery yesterday as members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and Unite staged a 24-hour walk-out. Network Rail and train companies across the country were affected, with only one in five services running.

Sun
RISHI Sunak last night vowed to stop leftie activists clogging up the courts with protest cases.
It comes amid fury at Remainer campaigner Jolyon Maugham who tried to use the courts to stop Brexit.
The Brexit hating QC – who once bludgeoned a fox to death while wearing his wife’s kimono – also sued the government for rushing through PPE contracts at the height of Covid.
One Sunak ally branded Mr Maugham “a fatberg stopping stuff from getting done”.
Mr Sunak says he will stop campaigners wasting time and millions of taxpayers’ cash with pointless legal challenges.
He will pass a new law to let judges immediately throw out cases brought to challenge legitimate decisions made by Parliament.

Telegraph
Liz Truss has pledged to halt the exodus of doctors from the NHS to tackle the Covid backlog and surging waiting lists.
The frontrunner in the Conservative leadership race is planning to unveil a series of radical reforms that will stop doctors from retiring early and entice retirees to return.
One in 10 consultants and GPs is expected to retire in the next 18 months because of pension rules that mean they are “paying to work”.
It comes amid concerns that the NHS backlog after lockdown is causing more than 1,000 excess deaths per week – more than the figure now killed each week by coronavirus.

Observer
Senior Tories have warned that their party will suffer dire electoral consequences under a Liz Truss premiership that fails to address the cost of living crisis, as Labour enjoys a poll bounce suggesting Keir Starmer could be on course for No 10.
Amid signs of mounting panic among high-ranking Conservatives about Truss’s economic policies, several former cabinet ministers told the Observer on Saturday the party would suffer devastating losses in blue and red wall seats unless Truss changes tack, if and when she enters No 10.
After Michael Gove described Truss’s plan to focus on cutting taxes as a “holiday from reality” and announced he was supporting Rishi Sunak, the latest Opinium poll for the Observer gives Labour and its leader a double poll boost, days after he backed a complete freeze on energy bills this autumn. Labour now enjoys its biggest Opinium poll lead in months – eight points – while Starmer has surged well ahead of Truss in the past two weeks when voters are asked who would be the best prime minister.

Sun
LIZ Truss last night vowed to unleash a “small business revolution” to stop Britain sliding into painful recession.
Channelling her political hero Mrs Thatcher, she promised to rip up the Treasury “orthodoxy” to get more startups thriving.
The Foreign Secretary says tax rules are unfair as they force genuinely self-employed tradesmen, like electricians and plumbers, to pay too much.
If she gets into No10, Ms Truss will order a review into these rules, known as IR35, to ease the burden.
The overwhelming favourite to be the next PM also hinted families and businesses will get more help with soaring energy bills this winter. She said every government “has to look at making sure life is affordable for people” and she’s looking at help “across the board”, including businesses.

Labour Party

Mail
Sir Keir Starmer faces a new ‘post-Corbyn’ hard-Left threat which allies fear could derail Labour’s drive back to power.
They raised alarm bells over the emergence of a new cost-of-living campaign backed by union leaders and Left-wing Labour MPs.
The ‘Enough is Enough’ movement already has more than 400,000 supporters – nearly as many members as the Labour Party, despite only being launched barely two weeks ago.
Backed by leading Labour Left-wing MPs Ian Byrne and Zarah Sultana, it is already being dubbed the ‘new Momentum’ and billed as the potential successor to the activist campaign which backed Sir Keir’s Left-wing predecessor as leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
And some Starmer loyalists fear the new trade union-backed movement, which campaigns for real pay rises and a ‘tax the rich’ agenda, will overshadow Labour’s own cost-of-living message.

Guardian
Labour has drawn up plans to put hundreds of pounds into the pockets of the lowest-paid workers by instructing the Low Pay Commission to factor in living costs when it sets the minimum wage.
It also wants to scrap the lower pay categories for workers aged between 18 and 22, so that everyone would be paid at the higher rate.
The minimum wage is set at £9.50 an hour for those aged 23 and above, £9.18 for 21- and 22-year-olds, and £6.83 for workers between the ages of 18 and 20.
The proposal to help tackle the cost of living crisis comes after the party announced a £29bn plan to freeze the energy price cap this autumn.
With inflation soaring to a 40-year high of 10.1% – heaping more pain on households as the cost of food, energy and fuel increase – pressure will grow on the government to follow suit.
In a joint article for the Guardian, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, write: “Poverty pay doesn’t just cause financial misery; it undermines many of the things that matter in life.

Energy

Independent
The energy price cap could triple by April with bills rocketing to £6,000, according to a new forecast, as business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was reported to be planning a clampdown on solar and wind firms.
The grim prediction from the Auxilione consultancy would reprent a nearly five-fold increase in energy prices in the space of a year, after regulator Ofgem’s price cap hit £1,971 four months ago.
While new polling suggests that two-thirds of voters support Covid-style support to help households with the cost of living crisis, Liz Truss – the frontrunner to replace Boris Johnson – has rejected further “handouts” and Labour’s proposed energy cap freeze in favour of cutting taxes and green levies.
But Mr Kwarteng, tipped by some to be Ms Truss’s chancellor if she enters No 10, insisted on Saturday night that “help is coming”, following warnings that 13 million people will be pushed into debt if the price cap rockets to £3,600 in October, as is expected to be announced next week.

Mail
Energy bills for the typical family could reach £6,000 a year by next April, it emerged last night.
New figures show the energy price cap, to be updated this week, will hit even higher levels next year.
The £6,089 figure, released by energy consultants Auxilione yesterday, represents a five-fold increase on where bills were until April this year, before wholesale prices took off and the price cap began to spiral.
Since then, gas prices have spiked to levels never seen before, as Vladimir Putin’s regime slashed supplies.Hard-pressed families are struggling with bills and face the prospect of more rises over the winter.
On Friday, regulator Ofgem will announce the level of the price cap to run from October – as winter hits and energy use rises. It is expected to increase from £1,971 to a crippling £3,576 a year for typical users.

Telegraph
Kwasi Kwarteng is planning to clamp down on wind and solar energy firms as a new forecast predicted the energy price cap will hit £6,000 in April.
New analysis from the energy consultancy Auxilione said the energy price cap will hit £6,000 in April, after rising to £3,576 in October, and £4,799 in January.
Auxilione said the energy prices would not fall until next July, when the cap would drop by a tenth to £5,486.
The increase will mean bills will still be almost triple their current level this time next year, as inflation squeezes household budgets by up to 13 per cent.
A poll by Opinium on Saturday found that 40 per cent of the public would not be able to afford their bills at all or have to cut back on essential spending if the energy price cap rises to £3,500 in October, while a quarter say they already cannot afford their bills.

Mail
Britain’s likely next Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has promised families that ‘help is coming’ on the cost of living.
The Business Secretary said work was urgently under way on ‘the best package of measures’ so that the next Prime Minister would be able to ‘hit the ground running’ the moment they assume office.
The Liz Truss supporter also appeared to rule out a future windfall tax on energy companies, saying he would prioritise domestic energy production.
Writing in The Mail on Sunday, Mr Kwarteng said: ‘No country is immune from rising prices – least of all Britain. I understand the deep anxiety this is causing. As winter approaches, millions of families will be concerned about how they are going to make ends meet.
‘But I want to reassure the British people that help is coming.’

Covid

Mail
The NHS is preparing a Covid-style campaign that will urge Brits to avoid A&E and to only dial 999 when absolutely necessary this winter – as the health service braces for a potential new coronavirus wave and a surge in deaths from cold homes amid soaring energy costs.
In a letter to health chiefs, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said winter planning had begun earlier than usual, ‘recognising pressure on the NHS is likely to be substantial, particularly in urgent and emergency care’.
Attached information to the letter asked hospitals to ‘implement your winter communications strategy to support the public to minimise pressures on urgent and emergency services’.
It comes after similar ‘Stay at Home’ measures following the onset of the pandemic helped fuel an enormous backlog, with the number of those who have waited for two years or more to receive treatment at around 6,700 in June.

Independent
The majority of people infected with Covid-19 are still infectious five days after their symptoms begin, new research suggests.
In the first real-world study of its kind, researchers from Imperial College London also found that a quarter of participants were still capable of passing on the virus after seven days.
The findings call into question NHS guidance on infection control, which recommends that people should remain at home and avoid contact with others for five days. There is no longer a legal requirement to self-isolate.
Dr Seran Hakki, one of the study’s co-authors, said there was a “lack of clarity around how to come out of self-isolation safely”.
“Our study is the first to assess how long infectiousness lasts for, using real-life evidence from naturally acquired infection. Our findings can thus inform guidance as to how to safely end self-isolation.”

Telegraph
A new inhaler therapy that alters genetic data in the lungs to stop coronavirus taking hold is on the horizon.
The treatment works by sending nanoparticles into the lungs containing tiny molecular scissors that snip away genetic messages instructing the body to produce an enzyme called ‘cathepsin L’.
The enzyme is known to play a key role in coronavirus and other respiratory infections, enabling the virus to enter host cells and proliferate.
Without ‘cathepsin L’, coronavirus struggles to take root – and scientists are hopeful that the treatment could be used in the days before or after risky events, such as plane journeys or weddings.
Prof Qianben Wang, senior author from the Department of Pathology at Duke University School of Medicine, said: “We are studying whether the treatment could be administered via an aerosol so people may carry an inhaler with them to big sporting events or long plane rides, taking a puff before or shortly after to reduce their risk.

Education

Telegraph
Pupils awarded inflated GCSE grades could select A-level subjects that are too hard for them, schools have been warned.
Teenagers may have been given a false sense of their abilities in the last two years, when marking was more lenient and based on teacher assessments.
GCSE grade inflation reached an all-time high in 2021, with 28.9 per cent of students awarded Grade 7 and above – equivalent to A or A*. It represented a significant rise from the 20.8 per cent of students awarded top grades in 2019.
Meanwhile, the number of students getting a clean sweep of the top GCSE mark was four times higher than before the pandemic.
This year’s GCSE cohort, which is the first to sit formal exams in three years, faces disappointment when they receive their results on Thursday, because exam boards trying to tackle grade inflation have been told to set grade boundaries below where they were last year. However, marking will still be more generous than it was in 2019.

Times
University bosses are calling for tuition fees to be raised closer to the £24,000 a year average that foreign students pay.
They warn the £9,250 paid by UK students, which has been frozen for a decade, is forcing them to take on an ever-increasing number of foreign applicants from countries such as China and India.
A record one in five young undergraduates starting at top universities this autumn are from overseas, according to official figures, up 7 per cent in a year. The number of British undergraduates has declined by 13 per cent.

BBC News
An exam board has apologised after some BTec students did not receive their results as expected last Thursday, throwing university places into doubt.
Pearson said a “very small percentage” of its BTec students were affected.
Hundreds of thousands of students received their A-level, BTec and T-level results this week.
One student told BBC News he has now missed his chance of a clearing place at his chosen university.
James, 18, from Sheffield, did a BTec in uniformed public services at Sheffield College.
As his friends celebrated their results on Thursday, he was sat refreshing the online results page.
“I was told I would hopefully get them by the end of the day but nothing came – it’s been really stressful,” he said.
“It’s kind of just going around in a loop – not having my results, asking people where they are, being told to wait and still not getting them.”

Strikes

Express
UNION WORKERS at the Felixstowe port have voted to go on strike over a pay dispute, the latest industrial action in the UK following a summer of strikes.
Almost 2,000 union workers will be striking at England’s biggest container port. The strike will begin on Sunday and last for eight days.
Felixstowe port, located on the east coast of England, is set to have a strike this week over disagreements over wages.
The members of Unite union voted 9-1 in favour of this strike, which will be the port’s first industrial action since 1989.
Members of the union include crane drivers, machine operators and stevedores.
The union has alleged that Felixstowe’s parent company has prioritised profits instead of paying workers a livable wage.

BBC News
Barristers are voting on proposals for an all-out strike next month as part of an ongoing row with the government over pay and legal-aid cuts.
The indefinite, uninterrupted strike – which comes after weeks of walkouts – would start on 5 September.
The ballot closes at midnight on Sunday and the result is expected on Monday.
More than 6,000 court hearings have been disrupted in England and Wales as a result of the walkouts by members of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA).
The CBA is asking for a 25% rise in pay for legal aid work, representing people who could not otherwise afford lawyers.

Evening Standard
Grant Shapps has urged the head of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union to put Network Rail’s pay offer to workers for a vote after Saturday’s strikes caused chaos across the country.
In a letter to RMT general secretary Mick Lynch on Saturday afternoon, the Transport Secretary  said the railway operator’s proposal of an 8 per cent pay rise over two years is “fair” and members should have the opportunity to resolve the dispute.
He also called on the union to accept proposed reforms to modernise the railway sector after Saturday’s walkouts left just 20 per cent of the rail network running.
The action is the latest in a series of walkouts over the last few months amid a stalemate between unions and train operators, which has caused travel chaos across the UK.

Ukraine

Express
PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY has warned that Russia could be planning something “particularly nasty” this week as Ukraine plans its Independence Day celebrations.
Ukraine’s Independence Day will be August 24, exactly six months after President Vladimir Putin  ordered Russia to invade Ukraine. The country looks to celebrate its 31 years since it became independent from the Soviet Union.
On Saturday, President Zelesky made an announcement in his nightly video address that Ukrainians must not allow Russia to “spread despondency and fear”.
He said: “We should be aware that this week Russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel.
“Such is our enemy. But in any other week during these six months, Russia did the same thing all the time—disgusting and cruel.”

Mail
British troops must warn their families they could be deployed to fight against Russia, a top soldier has declared.
Warrant Officer Paul Carney urged troops to warn their loved ones that the world faces ‘new realities’ – and that Britain is ‘ready to counter any aggression’.
The top brass wrote in his monthly column for Soldier magazine: ‘It is important we prepare our loved ones and families who often have the hardest role in our absence.
‘My ask is that you have discussions about a potential deployment with them now. Find contact numbers for support networks and relevant people who can help such as the unit welfare officer and padre.
‘The world has changed and we must be prepared for new realities.’

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